Wis[s]e Words

layaway

Published on December 18, 20112 Comments

Via Metafiler comes a story that restores some of your faith in humanity. In America there’s a tradition of layaways, setting aside something you want to buy but don’t have the money for just yet and pay for it in installments, after which you can pick it up. It’s old enough that the Isley Brothers could make it into a metaphor for delayed love and thanks to the crisis it’s gotten a new lease on life. Layaways are popular, especially this time of year, to pay for Christmas presents.

But of course, if you’re poor enough to need to pay for Christmas this way, you may end up never quite getting all the money you need to pay off your layaways. Which is where an army of secrets santas has come in, as all over America anonymous people have paid off layaway tabs for complete strangers:

— Indiana. “An anonymous woman made a special trip to the Indianapolis Super Kmart and paid off the outstanding layaway balances of several customers, according to ABC affiliate station WRTV-TV6.”

— South Carolina. ” ‘Probably two weeks ago, we started seeing people coming in asking to randomly pay off strangers’ layaways,’ Terry Northcutt, manager of the Mount Pleasant Kmart, told Mount Pleasant Patch. It adds that “so far, eight shoppers have come in to pay off stranger’s layaways, and as similar stories across the country are reported, Northcutt expects to see more.”

— Nebraska. “Dona Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son,” the AP says. “I was speechless,” Bremser told the wire service. “It made me believe in Christmas again.”

What makes this so good is not so much that this solves anybody’s problems, as that it brings some cheer to people who can use it the most. I’ve never been really poor myself, though I’ve been skint sometimes, but I imagine that one of the most awful bits of being poor is having that feeling that you’re not allowed to have nice things, a feeling that must be even worse at Christmas time. Having some stranger pay for your presents this way, without expecting anything in return or wanting publicity for it, in short without having any of the trappings of charity.

The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291 — Jean Richard

Published on December 17, 2011Leave a comment

The Crusades c. 1071 - c. 1291

The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291
Jean Richard
Jean Birrell
516 pages including index
published in 1999

The Crusades are not my favourite subject in Medieval history, as I tend to concentrate my reading on the early Middle Ages, but The Crusades c. 1071 – c. 1291 is part of the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series which I have good experiences with. The volumes in this series I’ve read so far all have been good introductions to their subjects. Of course, much still depends on the writer and I didn’t know Jean Richard, but he turns out to be a French historian who is well known enough to have an entry on the English language Wikipedia; this book was first published as Histoire des Croisades. The translation is by Jean Birrell and is good enough that you don’t really notice it is a translation.

Because of the American shenanigans in the Middle East in the past decade, the Crusades have been used quite a lot as a metaphor for these adventures, as well as an example for internet jihadists and Keyboard Kommandos both of the War Between Christianity and Islam as an universal war. The crusaders themselves feature as either the heroic defenders of the free west or bloodthirsty invaders of the peaceloving Islamic world. Reading a history like this is the best anecdote to that sort of nonsense. Jean Richard is careful to show that the motivations on both sides were slightly more complex than “Christ v Allah”. Religion obviously played a key role in the Crusades and there were certainly fanatics on both sides, but the realities of the Crusades and life in the Holy Land were more complex than the Crusading myths make out. What Richards contineously emphasises is that the key motivation for the Crusades was not the idea of forcibly converting heathens to Christianity, but rather of safe guarding the Holy land for Christianity, making it safe for pelgrims to visit, keeping the holy places safe for Christian worship.

More comix loot

Published on December 16, 2011Leave a comment

Another comics stack bought

Don’t see it as an opportunity for me to gloat, but for you to get to hear about great shopping opportunities. Which there are, as keen eyed viewers will have spotted the six Krazy Kat collections lurking in that shot, all bought at De Slegte for less than six euros each. Plenty are still available. Also gotten there, two issues of the Pontiac Review I didn’t have yet (Peter Pontiac being the closest Holland has to an underground legend like Crumb or Spain), plus perhaps the best catch of the lot, the new hardcover collection of Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese, which I actually did pay full price for because Dorkin is a god amongst cartoonists and deserves all the succes he can get.

Not pictured: two more Bob Morane issues and the 1986 The Art of George Herriman, as well as a collection of Rian Hughes’ stories that Image for some reason put out last year. Hughes being England’s answer to Yves Chaland or Serge Clerc, working in the same sort of retro-fifties/early sixties art style. You’ll know him, if you do, from being the artist on the early Grant Morrison Dan Dare revisionist series Dare. A brilliant little collection this which should be gotten just for that Dare series, but the rest looks swell as well.

If they give him an enema they can bury him in a shoebox

Published on December 16, 2011Leave a comment

As Christopher Hitchens himself once said about Jerry Falwell. Which is really all you need to say about Hitchens’ death as well. I’ve been a bit disappointed about the response to the news of his death, far too respectful and admiring of him. He has always been a douchenozzle, a bully boy who was full of his own courage, unsupported by the facts. He was a leftist when everybody was a socialist, then turned rightwing contrarian when fashions changed and finally turning himself in a professional atheist for the American market. But at all times he remained an asshole.

It’s just that this was easier to live with when his targets were a Henry Kissinger then when he used his talents to support the War on Iraq.

Cats in pubs

Published on December 15, 20111 Comment

Cats in bars or restaurants are fairly common in Holland. Not so much in the US apparantly, where even the Algonquin Hotel in New York has to break with an eighty year old tradition and leash its latest lobby cat in order not to get into trouble with health and safety:

For nearly 80 years, a cat has roamed free in the lobby of New York City’s famed Algonquin hotel, but now, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has made finding the friendly feline into a bit of a scavenger hunt.

The Algonquin has confined Matilda III, the latest in a line of lobby cats dating back to 1932, primarily to the arrival area and behind the reception desk thanks to a pre-emptive move to prevent crossing the DOH.

Restaurants have been getting tagged with hefty fine and reduced health ratings for minor violations, so the Algonquin made the move to avoid running afoul of the New York City Health Code. In a statement to TODAY.com, a rep for the DOH said: “According to the New York City Health Code, live animals are not allowed in food service establishments (except for edible fish, shellfish, or crustacean) unless a patron needs a service dog.”

I always find it a bit ironic that both the UK and the US, the two most doctrinaire free market countries in the world, also have the worst kind of rigid jobsworth government bureaucracies.